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New Clemson University architecture building set to test Charleston's limits on context

“We were hired to do the most important piece of contemporary architecture — or architecture of our time — that we can do in this city,” Cloepfil says.

The design for the 30,000-square-foot center at the northeast corner of George and Meeting streets includes three rectangular masses, not unlike grand three-story single houses in their approximate size.
— postandcourier.com

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47 Comments

Disappointing. Must have gone through significant design development without consideration of context because without the article I wouldn't have the slightest clue where the heck the site is. Nothing speaks Charleston, nothing speaks academic - let alone architecture school. Not that it has to be literal translation - I just don't see anything that lends itself to promote thought or respect to anything within context. Would have expected a slam dunk coming from AW. Very surprised.
With such rich historical context and knowing the intense approval process to come why slap something together like this? Your "on the boards" web page from the early 2000's wants it's project back

Half of this is all I need for my own personal opinion. Whether or not it is approved does not change my feelings, that's for sure. Convince me why this is site sensitive for instance - as far as I see, you could plop this thing on any site. If i'm wrong, i'm wrong - care should be taken with every image that is released to the public if you want to avoid criticism. I'd love to hear concept beyond, "I think it looks cool".
Every designer needs to take criticism with a grain of salt. It's the nature of our business.
Taking stabs at me with no defending argument doesn't help.

I'd have to agree with brooklynmade. Context isn't a matter of discussion in architecture unless you're creating acute angles in plan that reference some nearby street or a reference that's so abstracted as to be incomprehensible to anyone but the designer. As for criticising the building from the rendering the architects made to describe their building, wow. Amazing how far we've fallen as a profession.

Context wouldn't matter if it was a good building, however, that curving facade "rhythm" is devoid of any substance. Poor attempt at fashionable design.

These slits are a result of the shifting curves of each level of the plan, which in itself is a fine spacial strategy for circulation etc. However, you can't ignore that this is only a rendering. One can hope it gets expressed with more clarity and elegance in built form.

Now there's some real content. Contextual relationships can be abstract, literal or even ignored - but the concept in one way or another should address that, acknowledge that, and stand in some way so it speaks for itself. Become it's own context. I agree.
This can add depth to any design - Even if it's already strong in other ways.
Blogboy, you'll finally get it - or at least be able to formulate real argumentative content if you ever are able to get something built - especially if you first have to go through any degree of client or local approval. For now, keep clicking away on that mouse and play with your flashy objects.

Preservationists like to use "context" as an excuse to suck the life out of any attempt which threatens their cultural hoarding.

Weak fashion perhaps, but take a ganders at the counterproposals and you'll see the same ole same ole faux-oldies.They are unable to propose something architecturally/culturally unique to Charleston, which isn't another european import.

Almost the entire history of architecture is "revivalist" by your criteria, ie. that it looks like something that came before. This superficial analysis of architecture has impoverished contemporary architecture for years with out acknowledgement that modernism is a 100 year old style. Besides the cpu air-circulation slits on the side, the glass grid facades are no different than what's been done before, but would that make it a bad building? Of course not, but when you're trying to discuss a building with people who identify themselves more by what they're against, than what they're for, the conversation usually get's stuck on this level.

As for context not mattering if this where a good building, I think that depends on the context. In a clear cut context, sure, do what you want. In a built-up context, or better yet, a historical context, unless you're designing public sculpture, context will always matter. Like an individual who says, "the hell with the people around me, I'll do what I like" When you get a job and deal with real clients and users, tell me how that nihlism works out for you. My guess is you'll adopt a new personality as quickly as you go through architectural fashions. Till then, the hell with it!

i wasn't really 'stabbing' at you, brooklynmade. just cautioning that it'd be better to wait until we see more about the building (and its site) until declaring it to be a piece of junk.

perhaps you're overlooking that this is also going to be the architecture dept. building? why is it so incredible that AW would design something very contemporary? the rendering is pretty lame... but, it's a rendering. again... reserve judgment.

It's less that context wouldn't matter and more that a building which had some semblance of substance or beyond architectural composition, this offering could, in the minds of clients and community members, justify an approach that was perhaps not so sensitive to the site.

Charleston is all neo-classical, from the original 1700's Palladian architecture through the classical revivals of the 1800's to the Roman Beaux-Arts and Georgian Revival of the early 20th century, but they're all european imports, unlike modernism, which was an organic outgrowth of the European Colonists relationship with their new environment.

When Gropious became dean of the Harvard School of Architecture after WWII, he banned the students from the architectural library. There's a reason people don't want you to think for yourself.

Thank god they came up with a polio vaccine or thank god for Martin Luther King, but I'm not sure we need to thank God for some out of work German architect who landed a sweet gig at a prestegious American University. Man it must have been good to be a European modernist in America after World War Two. Those accents sound sooo cool.

Now if only we could find a modern architect with the courage to stand up to the faux mid-century modernist revival sweaping the nation. God...are you listening?

surprising that such a standard looking building is inciting any discussion at all. it's pretty tame as architecture goes. shouldn't the real anger and vitriol be saved up for something more ... um ....more?

i for one want to know who stuck that big phallic symbol in front of the whitehouse. crazy venile thing. i hear it was imported from the middle east. can't be right.

Sorry Will, it's not just the accent, you have to be a hustler too. Plus, WWII was a time that can't be recreated. Before that, America was still a wanna-be country. I agree though that this building is a bit tame. My guess the people of Charleston have seen what happens if you let architects who could care less about context loose in your town, and they think their beautiful city is worth preserving. They preserve towns a lot less special all over Europe, so why not here with the few intact towns we have left? They even have a nice accent in Charleston.

context is for pussies. if this building were to be about context, then it would need to look like a plantation, have slaves working the fields. oh, wait, maybe then given the fact it is an architecture school it does have a relationship to its context.

can someone point me to the book where it says all architecture must relate to its immediate context, and never challenge its immediate context?

God, make it stop. Context is for what? C'mon now.. If you're going to make a statement like that, back it up with something. All I'm saying is if context and/or history of a project/site is considered, there's opportunity to make the concept stronger. This can also allow the concept more freedom of interpretation - even in proposing a whole new aesthetic. I use the word "consider" strongly.
Identifying with the context of Clemson and south Carolina is far, far far from the grossly exaggerated suggestion of columns, plantations and slaves. It could be as simple as paying attention to a certain level of scale, proportion, a significant date or historical event, carefully abstracting certain details, the building's silhouette, the significance of this building now being a landmark form for helping new students orient themselves on campus, careful use of materials.... I could go on and on. Without even changing the look or overall goal of AW's concept.
If that's there and I just don't see it - then shame on me. We have opportunities to preserve the historical aspects (if any) and timeline of a site with the simplest gestures. Create layering of history - and even more reason to propose something new and not seen before. And by addressing that, even if the choice is to create new context - the concept is stronger by immediately creating more meaning. Not just to us but the users, too.

I hate to brake it to you - whether or not you choose to use it, context is something that exists for every project - before and after a building is finished. It will always be a part of your project one way or another whether you like it or not - and whether it's been addressed or hasn't. It's a constant, evolving variable in every design project.

Funny the stuff kids latch on to when they have nothing else left in the tank to say. Again, just like playing with a new born. No words, just smiles and some empty giggles. Whatever's new makes 'em happy.
Good luck trying to get real stuff built. Better yet good luck getting beyond production staff.
Dbag

It's funny to hear the GOP label thrown at anyone who dosen't subscribe to the "FUCK CONTEXT" point of view. I'm sure my promiscuous relationship with architectural history would make even brooklynmade uncomfortable (I'm guessing), but to be a 100% ablolutist is the definition of a Tea Partier. No compromise, no common ground=liberal? Keep sell'n!

Idiot finally admitted what ive been trying to say all along. Is he finally getting it??

"we were hired to do the most important piece of architecture - or architecture of our time - in this city"

In no way shape or form does it meet any of that. *yawn*. This is tame - but youre acting like its groundbreaking design. It's so tame that it is as forgettable as the posts on this blog. Cutting edge architecture? Pretty sure i saw this in a grimshaw book featuring projects from the 90's. There's no depth to it really... A few redundant forms stacked... But wait, with a curved facade. Was that supposed to be the big feature? In other words, I'm bored. I don't see the slightest hint of innovation. Could have been more meaningful to derive a similar form from an actual historical aspect. Then you'd almost not be able to argue the design. Ex - the three vertical forms represent the size and scale of the previous three buildings on site which were important visual landmarks on the campus. Modern interpretation essentially keeps the historical function of the buildings that used to be there - abstractly.
There will always be "new" ways to represent architectural design as technology evolves. What doesn't change, however, is the history of a place. It's up to us to preserve that history where we can to help tell the story of "how" and "why" we got to where we are now with whatever new design we propose. Certainly helps restore order, greater meaning - and therefore stronger function and stronger free forms.
Btw - I secretly love how these guys think I'm 99 years old. Meanwhile, I'm probably the same age. Just have a few more AIA awards under my belt. You'll get there - for now stick with rendering other people's ideas until you're good enough to come up with your own. Which, sounds like may never come unless you open up a bit more and start taking this seriously.

Faux-oldies like to use context as an excuse to copy neoclassical leftovers. They call it "layering" but really it is a system to reinforce their religious belief that nothing really changes. For now stick with rendering other people's ideas until you're good enough to come up with your own.

Tame design perhaps, but obviously controversial for Charleston, now why is that? Could it have something to do with all the faux-old counterproposals?

And if you're going to talk about breaking ground now, if a creative method for interpreting the physical context was proposed, I'll bet the faux-oldies would be up in arms anyways.

"but really it is a system to reinforce their religious belief that nothing really changes"

You've bought into Madison Avenue's main marketing schtick that everything must always be new to be valid. Wait till you're older and have some perspective, and some pipsqueek starts attacking you for the crime of aging. You remind me of people like Robert Moses who could care less what the inhabitants of a place felt. You know better, with your 100 year old ideological beliefs. You're exactly what you criticise, ecxept your not faux, your the real thing. Someone who hates cities and is religeous in their perspective.

This attitude against anything that resembles the non-modernist past is responsible for the destruction of monumnets like Penn Station. Not that money'd interests didn't want to see the "non-performing" "obsolete" structures torn down to make way for impersonal corporate modernism, but the architects could have at least advocated for the people without money and education. They could have expressed people's affections and sense of civic pride. Like Alan Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, and Crissy Hynde all spoke and sung about, they tore down paradise. Penn Station was based on the Baths of Caracalla from antient Rome, which is all you need to know to declare it a faux-old neo-classical piece of shit. Except thousands of average people who came and went from it will remember it as a glorious gateway to the city. With is's soaring glass and steel train shed and it's majestic stone columns. They would never have guessed that idiot academics would spend hours debating the "authenticity" of these structures, becasue they where authentic to them. But the people are fools as LeCorbusier taught us, the very people we are supposed to build for, the very people we are supposed to take care of. They're nostalgic idiots living in a world of makebelieve as they try to get their daughter to her piano class or son to a soccer game and the last thing on thier mind is how authentic a style is. Instead their senses have been dulled by so much modernist schlock that gives them nothing to look at except abstracted banality. To them it's all just ugly, but what do they know?

You'd be surprised how many people ask, "where's the Garden", and "where's Penn Station?" (I work nearby). I respond sadly - "you're looking at it". And they lift up their cameras to take a picture.... Of? Sure they have no idea.

These guys aren't getting the point - and won't. My stance is the new arch building may have had stronger presence with even the slightest hint of respect to context. It's easy to play critic - sure. But that's the nature of the biz

I'm not trying to. Simply a "what if" statement. intentionally open ended.
Maybe I've failed in your mind (which I couldn't care less), but certainly got a few people to join in the conversation. Including you.
I'm not trying to redesign anything here. Why do we keep going to the extremes?

No reason you can't achieve the same aesthetic while incorporating some context. If there's a specific reason why it's not doing that - then why? If there's more to this that I'm missing, so be it. It just doesnt hit a sweet spot with me. Is it so wrong to have an opinion?
Btw - who the hell cares where I'm from?

Faux old does not exist as far as I'm concerned and has absolutely nothing to do with my critique. It's a faux term. Thayer - I wouldn't even waste your breath on the faux boys. Clearly not willing to even look into things like when and why Clemson started an architecture program in the first place.

It's a shame the old Higgins Hall auditorium burned down. Many an hour studying it's lovely 19th century metal truss ceiling structure and the romanesque leaf work at the end of wood beams. It's amazing how those lectures on Mies and Corb inspired me to study architecture.